Great piece Bel. In the Pacific, I would add that orgs like OCCRP are doing strong work to support local investigative journalism in Pacific newsrooms, however the global cuts to aid under Trump are strongly threatening work like this. Australia also invests in Pacific media strengthening, however gaffs like what happened at the PIF are in direct contradiction to those investments -- the lack of policy coherence can be completely maddening. And of course, it is a big problem to have media too dependent on international aid donors, one of the very sectors the media should be scrutinising. It is great to hear about the crowdfunding approach being used for independent reportage in Papua -- one of the funding challenges in Pacific countries is the very small populations, but it would be interesting to see how viable these approaches could be elsewhere.
Hello Ash, thank you and yes love how you've summarised the policy challenges so succinctly for truly independent Pacific media. And for anyone reading along, two shout outs: OCCRP are indeed doing excellent work publishing local investigative journalism and have a newsletter at https://www.occrp.org/en. And Ashlee writes about policy and more at A Bit Better https://abitbetter.substack.com/ --- wait can you tag other substacks in comments? God it feels like 2006 and I'm learning how to use Facebook again.
Great piece Bel. In the Pacific, I would add that orgs like OCCRP are doing strong work to support local investigative journalism in Pacific newsrooms, however the global cuts to aid under Trump are strongly threatening work like this. Australia also invests in Pacific media strengthening, however gaffs like what happened at the PIF are in direct contradiction to those investments -- the lack of policy coherence can be completely maddening. And of course, it is a big problem to have media too dependent on international aid donors, one of the very sectors the media should be scrutinising. It is great to hear about the crowdfunding approach being used for independent reportage in Papua -- one of the funding challenges in Pacific countries is the very small populations, but it would be interesting to see how viable these approaches could be elsewhere.
Hello Ash, thank you and yes love how you've summarised the policy challenges so succinctly for truly independent Pacific media. And for anyone reading along, two shout outs: OCCRP are indeed doing excellent work publishing local investigative journalism and have a newsletter at https://www.occrp.org/en. And Ashlee writes about policy and more at A Bit Better https://abitbetter.substack.com/ --- wait can you tag other substacks in comments? God it feels like 2006 and I'm learning how to use Facebook again.
Haha I'm pretty new here too so your guess is as good as mine! 😂 Thanks for the shoutout xx